The influence of the social environment on exploration and caching behaviour in highly social pinyon jays and less social Clark’s nutcrackers.
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Date
2020
Authors
Vernouillet, Alizee
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Abstract
Social living is thought to influence an individual’s behaviour and cognitive abilities at the species level. When living in a group, interactions between members can be complex and changing. The Social Niche Hypothesis states that individuals within social groups fill particular niches (i.e., social roles), and their personalities (i.e., behavioural responses repeatable over time and across contexts) fit those of their dedicated social niche. Hence, there should be greater inter-individual variability in personalities for highly social species because there are more social niches to fill than for less social species. In Chapter 2, I compared the exploratory behaviour among four corvid species differing in their sociality - less-social Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana), black-billed magpies (Pica hudsonia), California scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica), highly-social pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). I found that a species’ relative sociality did not explain species differences in exploratory behaviour, but their reliance on cached (stored) food may better fit the pattern of the results. Chapter 3 is a linking chapter integrating the previous results into the context of social living. Social living is thought to be cognitively demanding, as individuals can benefit by remembering past interactions with others to better predict their behaviour. Cognitive flexibility, the ability to generalize information across contexts, is thought to have arisen in response to the cognitive demands of social living. In Chapter 4, I used an ecologically-relevant paradigm comparing the flexibility between pinyon jays and Clark’s nutcrackers, two species relying heavily on cached food. Birds cached under four different conditions: alone, in presence of an object, a conspecific, or a heterospecific. Pinyon jays cached their food in a safe location when observed by a conspecific or a heterospecific, whereas nutcrackers reduced the amount of food cached, but only in presence of a conspecific. This species difference in caching behaviour and behavioural flexibility, specifically the ability to perceive a pilfering heterospecific as a threat, may be explained by their differences in sociality. Overall, for corvids, both foraging ecology and social living seem to influence behavioural flexibility. Results from my thesis provide new insights into the impressive cognitive abilities of corvids.
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Keywords
Comparative cognition, Birds, Behavioural ecology, Caching behaviour, Personality, Corvids